


Blood Like Lemonade

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Brothers, F/M, Gen, Healing, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-02-04 18:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18610150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Luther hasn’t left the Hargreeves’ manor since his accident – since he died and came back DIFFERENT, really.  A visit from one of his siblings is about to change things.  Luther had never expected to see Ben again, for so, so many reasons.  But now…Now, it looks like there’s trouble.Vampire AU.  Updates Fridays.





	1. Hey, Aren’t You Dead?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there~~~ I hope you enjoy this fic if you read it!!!
> 
> 1\. The minute I heard that “Blood Like Lemonade” song in the show, I was thinking about doing some kinda vampire AU. So… The story title is from that song, by Morcheeba. :P  
> 2\. I love Luther’s canonical plant on his moonbase!!! Luther the gardener. It clicked, in my head?  
> 3\. I’m truly sorry for any and all mistakes I might’ve made!!!  
> 4\. Please, have a wonderful day~

The night was gentle and bright, so bright Luther Hargreeves could almost pretend it was daytime and he’d just decided to try out a pair of weird silvery sunglasses.  Maybe they were some sort of experiment his dad had cooked up, and Luther could feel useful by wearing them — no, wait, maybe Allison had picked them up for him, in this fantasy timeline.  Maybe she said they made him look like one of her Hollywood friends.

Luther would’ve liked sunglasses that could mimic moonlight, just a few years ago.  He’d been called “Spaceboy” since he was small, after all...  He’d known the name “Spaceboy” long before Mom picked “Luther” for him, and he’d been featured as a guest at plenty of science-y talks across the country.  It had been really something, growing up as the first kid on the moon.  Luther couldn’t go up there  _now_ , though, of course.  The sun would be too unforgiving, his father was sure, and his new plastic-wax skin would melt to pulp on his bones.  Maybe if they made a better suit?  Maybe if they made a better suit,  _the best suit_ , Luther could walk around the yard during the day, too, or fly to California and see Allison like “Surprise!  I’m not dead!”

Except Luther wasn’t actually going to do anything like that.  With the planes, with the quips.  Except Luther  _had_  died, and he was technically still dead, now.  Still dead, but possessing his own body.  Still dead, but he could laugh politely at whatever jokes Mom told and go out to work in the yard sometimes.

Luther avoided mirrors, now.  Since the accident. Not because he wouldn’t see his reflection, but because the mirror couldn’t help but show his body the way it really was.  He would have been buried...  Years ago.  Years.  His father had him smear something that smelled like formaldehyde on his skin before he went to bed, and take little pills that looked like golden coins.  Luther wasn’t exactly a  _fan_ , but no matter how many strange missions Dad sent him on it wasn’t like he could die again so easily, could he?  At least he could be useful.  At least he could feel worth something, even now, if Dad called for him.

Dad hadn’t sent Luther on a mission in a long time.  Too long.  He was working in the yard again that night, and quite honestly the appeal of sunglasses that could make the world look like moonlight had died a while ago, too.  That cold fragile glow had swallowed so much of Luther’s world for so long, it felt like even his old, old memories really should have taken place at night.  Luther had trimmed his dad’s fancy hedges into interesting shapes again, just recently — a pirate ship, a huge violin, a domino mask with blank leafy eyes staring back at him.  He was just about to start planting some flowering trees.  They’d probably look really nice, in the spring.  Luther and Pogo had flipped through magazines full of different options to plant, and Luther had tried to pretend he didn’t notice Pogo was worried about him.

There was no reason to be worried, was there?

After a while, Luther’s mom came out to find him in the yard; she had a cup on a tray, with an old-fashioned paper straw.  It was a pink-ish cup, meant to make the stuff inside look like pink lemonade.  They both knew it wasn’t.  It would be warm, like it had known a beating heart just recently...  But only because Mom had warmed it up for him.  Luther kept telling her she didn’t need to do that, but it honestly did make it — God, it  _did_  make it better, didn’t it?

The first time he’d been asked to feed, Luther had told himself he’d resist it like the hero turned undead by accident in a movie.  That he’d stand strong and resolute, that he’d never waver until he wasted away.  Going with honor.

He hadn’t actually  _resisted_ , though.  Not even that first time.

Maybe it was a mercy no one had been there to see him, then — only Mom, who had rubbed his back and probably been programmed not to flinch.  When Luther had first woken up, he’d been a little heartbroken that no one else came by to sit at his bedside for a while.  None of the other Umbrella Academy team members, not even Allison who had once said she would wear their paired initials around her neck forever.  No one had been there to fight on his team, like they used to; no one had checked in for ages.

But by the time he fed, by the time he knew he wouldn’t even fight this, Luther also knew he wasn’t gonna call anybody to let them know what happened.  He knew he’d be like the dead — sleeping, he’d be  _sleeping_  — if Klaus ever came to try and scrape together some drug money during the day.  He knew he still felt a nasty churning in his stomach, flipping through magazines about Allison and her fancy, bright-smiling husband, but he also told himself all that was probably for the best.

It was hard to know how anything could change, now.  It was hard to know when a new mission would come, or where Luther could possibly go.  He would not age.  He could only die under really specific, excruciating circumstances.  The future sprawled out before him like a sky without stars.

Luther drank his lemonade-that-wasn’t-lemonade, and then he carried the cup back inside.  Mumbled another “Thank You” to Mom.  He dug deep holes for the new trees to find homes in, and maybe he was really absorbed in his thoughts...  Maybe he was relishing even just those moments of selected, manufactured purpose...  But he didn’t hear his brother Ben come up behind him until he was tapping him on the shoulder.

Which, in itself, was super, super weird.

Ben had been dead for  _years_ , after all.  Longer than Luther, and their dad hadn’t even managed to bring him back a little, little bit.  Luther tended to soft white flowers at the foot of Ben’s grave-statue, sometimes.   _“May the darkness within you find peace in the light,”_  that statue said along its base — and Luther had hoped Ben could find something like peace, hoped with all his hollow still heart.  He wished someone had asked Ben what kind of flowers he would’ve liked at his grave while he was alive... ‘Cause Luther’d just guessed, you know...  But that wasn’t the sort of thing people were encouraged to talk about, growing up.

Luther, incidentally, would’ve liked zinnias.  Like in  _Star Trek_  — like the first flowers grown in space.

“Ben?” Luther breathed.  Or, didn’t breathe. He didn’t actually  _need_  to breathe.  “What the —?  Are you —”

Ben was watery and not-quite-there, but he’d been able to tap Luther’s back with nearly solid fingers.  Ben flickered in and out of the world all the time, and he was wearing a dark jacket with the hood pulled up.  His eyes were afraid, but more determined that Luther generally remembered them.  He was a ghost – _he was a ghost_ , but Luther was close enough to “ghostly” himself that he could see him just the same as anything else under the moonlight.

“Please, come with me,” Ben said.  “Don’t freak out or anything.  It’s okay.  Well, it’s not ‘okay,’ but that’s why I’m here.”

Luther wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say, in a moment like this, but he  _did_  say, “We missed you, Ben,” and Ben took a moment to study his face.  Study the dirt on Luther’s bloodless hands.  Luther had turned around with a shovel slung over his arm, and a couple leaves in his hair.  He was thinking about how Ben had died – he _so often_ thought about how Ben had died – but he hadn’t realized he’d ever be able to really look him in the eyes again.  Who knew what happened to undead creatures when the sun finally got them, or somebody managed to carry around their heads by the hair?

Luther whispered, “I’m so sorry,” because he’d wanted to say that for a long time.  Ben pulled him into a hug, then, there under the giant hedge shaped like a violin, where those flowering trees would be come spring.  He was so cold, and Luther could see straight through him to the rest of the yard beyond.

“I should’ve dragged Klaus back here more often,” Ben confided.  “I  _told_  him it was weird we hadn’t heard from you in a while.”

Luther didn’t mention anything about ghost-Ben scolding Klaus for — apparently? — years without anyone knowing it...  Not yet, anyway.  He definitely had some  _choice questions_  lining themselves up in his head, about then.  A proper bullet-point list.  But that could wait.

“Did you say there was trouble?” Luther asked.  He could hear his old, familiar tone creeping back in again.  The sort of voice he’d been trained for as Number One of the Umbrella Academy.  Spaceboy.  A superhero.  That felt like another life by now, and really – biologically, legally – it was.

“Yeah,” said Ben.  “It’s Klaus.  Some people have...  Some people  _got_  him.  They’re using him.  I don’t think we have much time.”

Luther cleared his throat.  He hefted the shovel a little higher on his shoulder, trying to decide how quickly it would snap if he needed it to crack some bones. To bring his brother home.  It might last for a few swings, even with Luther’s strength.

He hadn’t been off their father’s property in ages.  When Luther suggested they go let Dad know what was going on, Ben looked so panicked — so desperate — that he decided to just leave a scribbled note, instead.  No use waking Dad if they might be too late to actually be effective, by then...  No use waking Dad if this was just gonna be a simple rescue, like from a gang or some debt collectors or something.  Just in and out, right?  Luther wasn’t going to let one of his siblings die, again.  How could he knowingly let Klaus go through a fight like this alone?

Luther’s first step beyond the bounds of the Hargreeves’ yard felt huge, just now.  Ben shot him a sad half-smile, as if he understood.  And then they ran.


	2. Vampires Under the City?  Really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to chapter 2!!! I hope it came out okay, and also that everybody had an amazing week. :D :D :D 
> 
> Thank you for reading~

Last time Luther had been out in the living, mortal world, he didn’t remember there being so much neon.  It made the city look like an exploded pack of highlighters – like something on TV stretching beyond the screen and spilling over everything.  There was so much light and movement even just hurrying after Ben’s ghost down the street.  There were sirens all over the place, too; there were people smoking together draped in nightclub doorways and laughing in the road, dodging cars that screamed at them with horns louder than anything Luther had heard in what felt like years.  Wait.  What _had_ been years, actually, huh? 

It was almost too much, all of it, after the silver monotony of Luther’s dad’s backyard.  The glossy lamplight and velvet of the manor…  The quiet whispering of book pages.  Luther’d read adventure novels and speculation about the depths of space, mostly – except, of course, for Vanya’s memoir.  There had been the ticking of Dad’s very proper stiff-backed clock down the hall, too, and occasionally a visit from Pogo if Dad didn’t keep him too busy.  Luther had played records quietly, for himself, sometimes.  When it felt right.  But that music had been nothing like this.

Luther smiled at some of the people they passed, just a little, on reflex.  Nodding his head if somebody met his eye as if he were still wearing his Umbrella Academy uniform, on duty as Spaceboy.  It was almost a muscle spasm, he’d trained himself so completely, though of course for the undead maybe it was more like rigor mortis.

Someone called Luther “Cutie,” at one point, and asked why he was carrying such a huge, dirty shovel around.  Was he in costume or something?  She called Luther “Cutie” and he thought, well, at least she wasn’t looking at his reflection in the closed restaurant window they were passing just then.  She would’ve seen his skin turning to earth, if she had.  Stringy and wet and melting so he could barely recognize himself – so he could see too much of his own bones.  Luther’d gotten just a glimpse, once or twice, and flinched.  Sucked in a painful breath he didn’t need.  He grinned at the lady, though, and said, “No, ma’am.  I’ve just been gardening.”

A couple times, Luther almost lost Ben in the crowd…  Or sometimes Ben shivered out of being for a second, like the TV program of this new world going to static in places.  The way Luther understood it, their other brother Klaus’s power was all that kept Ben tethered to this world.  Quasi-tangible and able to point out their favorite old donut shop to Luther as they rushed by, nudging him in the side.  Whenever Klaus’s grip weakened, whenever he slipped away too far, Ben couldn’t quite hold his soul together.  Luther called his name nearly every time it happened, trying not to sound panicked enough to really scare the people around him.  He froze, eyes wide, jaw going slack, until Ben reappeared.  He knew damn well Ben might _not_ reappear, and then getting him back – getting Klaus back – would become so much harder.  Luther wasn’t even completely sure where the sketchy hotel Klaus and Ben had been staying in actually _was_.

He’d find it, of course.  He knew he’d do his best.  But that was all Luther could ever, ever do, and it hadn’t always been enough, had it?

They were on their way to a gross hotel room with crusty stains on the ceiling, apparently, and used needles on the floor of the bathroom.  Klaus had thought he needed the drugs the people who’d been renting that room could get him; he had thought maybe he could make them laugh, thought they liked him, thought they could forget about everything together for a little while.  Ben sounded so drained when he talked about it.  Like he was a tube of toothpaste that had been squeezed nearly all the way out.  Luther had tried to reassure him as well as he could, but he would’ve had a hard time sticking the right words together even before he’d been cut off from everybody for so long.

“We’ll find where they took him,” Luther said, trying to sound appropriately in-charge.  “We’ll inspect the crime scene.  Soon.”

Wherever the strangers who had rented that hotel room took Klaus, Ben hadn’t been able to follow him.  It should have been impossible, being so unstuck from the guy who kept him bound to the world, but…  But there was some sort of block where Klaus had been in Ben’s mind, all the same.  He’d seen one of them – a tall guy, great smile – toss Klaus over his shoulder like he didn’t weigh anything at all.  As Ben put it, he’d never seen anybody lift people quite like that except _Luther_ , way back when.  This man had pried up the carpet of that motel room and scraped his elegant pianist’s fingers into the floor beneath it.  Dragged the whole motel room up out of its earth, for a second, and carried Klaus down and down and down.  Klaus had been wearing an x-ed out sack over his head, and he’d looked rattling and limp like a Biology classroom skeleton.  A single stream of dark blood had dribbled down his wrist and stained the carpet.  He’d had a tie-dye shirt on, and no shoes.

The motel room floor had sealed itself up beneath this guy, Ben swore to God.  Swore on everything he and Luther had ever believed in.  Ben had been watching through a sliding glass door, at this point, because he’d been sick of watching Klaus hint so, so strongly at this guy that he needed something to help him stop feeling again soon.  He’d gone outside to look at the sky, to pretend to kick rocks.  Maybe that was all it took?  Maybe the guy had needed to get Klaus alone?  But how…?

“I don’t think they’re –” Ben was about to say _“human,”_ maybe, Luther suspected, but he swerved just in time, “– alive.  I know they didn’t breathe.  I can _tell_ these things.”

“So they’re like me?  Like how you knew you could tap my shoulder?”

Ben wrinkled his nose.  Frowned.  “I didn’t say that, big guy,” he said.  And then, “They were hungrier.”

Luther ducked his head at that, and he knew he would’ve flushed bright red if he could have.  He’d never met any other undead, not since his accident, but of course he knew there were plenty of ways to create them.  Dad had suspected there were vampires in their city – back in the day, (when Luther could _go out_ in the day,) he’d sometimes had him tracking their nests.  Luther had been told to peel back curtains in old gift shops and unstop sewer grates that had become conveniently plugged with dark glue.  He didn’t think much of it at the time.  He hadn’t known how to truly imagine being hunted, himself.

Ben said he’d come to their dad’s house because he hadn’t known where else to go – he was looking for Dad’s notes on everything under the city, his notes on the undead.  Something.  Anything.  He’d found Luther, first.

“We’ll figure this out,” Luther said, and he hoped he was using the kind of voice that would make Ben feel less alone.  Ben had seen Luther’s reflection in the windows they passed, too, but he didn’t seem afraid or even really that surprised.  Maybe he’d been dead so long that decay seemed like old hat, by now.  Maybe it was doing Ben a disservice to think he’d ever be nervous around one of his siblings because of something beyond their control, something to do with how they looked.  People had called Ben “the Horror” once upon a time, back when they’d called Luther “Spaceboy.”  He had a link to twitching, writhing eldritch creatures tucked between his ribs.  Monsters under his skin.  Or, hidden somewhere inside his wavery ghost-light, now.

“Turn here,” Ben said.  “Careful.  Watch your head.”

The motel where Klaus had been living looked like it was only just barely holding itself together, mostly yellow glass and chipped paint.  Brownish paisley carpet.  It was funny, seeing Klaus’s familiar handwriting on the mirror in lipstick, here, writing something slurred and jokey because he’d thought these people were his friends.  Seeing Klaus’s coat tossed over a chair, the pockets full of candy Luther knew better than to eat, just then.  He’d never been high in his life, actually.  He wasn’t even sure if the undead could _get_ high.

The TV was still playing when Luther and Ben got there.  Even though everything around was deathly still, Luther knew something was watching them.  Something was so, so close, and whatever it was had left the sliding glass door unlocked.

Maybe it was a coincidence that Allison was in the movie playing on the motel TV, just then, but Luther wasn’t so sure.  This wouldn’t have been a channel Klaus wanted to watch, probably.  Allison was wearing silvery leather and shooting zombies, in this particular film.  Her sunglasses were bright, polished mirrors, and Luther knew she’d joked in a magazine interview about how weird it was her character kept managing to find different kinds of makeup in a zombie-haunted apocalypse.

It was difficult to ignore Allison’s laughter, when she bantered with her fellow human survivors in their battered _Scooby-Doo_ style end-of-the-world van.  Luther glanced over his shoulder to catch her smiles more times than he thought he should have, and even though _of course_ Ben noticed he didn’t say a word.  Those smiles had been meant for Luther, once.  In another life.

Ben suggested they turn up the television’s volume, just in case, you know.  In case there was a lot of noise, pretty soon.  Luther did – cranking the volume maybe a little _too_ loud, ‘cause now Allison’s laughter was everywhere, everywhere – and he stuffed Klaus’s things into a duffel bag from all throughout the room.  Ben directed him, so he could get everything…  Klaus’s empty wallet from under the bed; his collection of novelty lighters from one of the nightstand drawers, by a water-warped motel copy of the King James Bible.

Luther never put down his shovel, of course, not completely, though he did let it slip a few times.  He bowed his head and closed his eyes, now and then, pretending to be unaware.  He left his broad back to the darkness beyond the sliding glass door.  When the attack came, probably the creature thought it would be a surprise.

She was a shadow in the corner of the room one second, shifting in the glow of the TV screen, and then she was hurling herself at Luther with intricately carved knives, clear and hollow-looking like they’d been chipped out of glass.  If he’d been just a little bit slower, she might have taken out his eye.  As it was, she carved a thin streak down Luther’s temple, up into his hair – as it was, Luther didn’t bleed like he used to.  He cracked her spine with a heavy shovel swing.  When she fell, she went from drop-dead beautiful to shriveled and cold, with maggots between her teeth.  The sleeping undead.

Luther had never fully realized what _he_ would look like sleeping, not until just that second.  Any daydreams he’d ever had about breakfast in bed with Allison, about falling asleep camping in the woods, about _all sorts of things_ took on a really different flavor, then.  He looked at Ben, raising his eyebrows as if to say, _“Huh.  Good enough, you think?”_ and Ben said, “Luther… Behind you.”

There were more of them, then.  Melting from between the cracks in the ceiling; uncoiling from the vent; watching from beyond the sliding glass door, out in the crumbling parking lot.  The last time Luther’d gone into a fight by himself, it really, really hadn’t ended well.  Maybe he should’ve woken Dad up, after all…  Though what could _that_ have done?  Maybe he should’ve swallowed the pill and called Diego, if he was still in town.  Maybe he should have –

It was too late.  Luther hefted his shovel up higher and barked, “Hey creeps – where’s my brother?”  He would have to be ready.  He would have to be the Umbrella Academy’s Number One, again, even if he was the only one left.

Except that now, Luther wasn’t the only one, was he?  Next to him, Ben was crouching down and pocketing the fallen undead’s twin glass-bright knives.  Or, ghostly versions of them, anyway.  Just in case.  Ben was letting the Horror squirm through his skin, again, those tentacle creatures that could reach from beyond his bones uncoiling into the air.  Spectral and flickering, but solid enough against something nearly ghostlike.  Ben had dreaded summoning them, back when they were kids.  Luther used to coax him, because he was the leader.  Because that was his job, and of course their dad’s orders had to be right.

No matter how _that_ had gone – no matter how many of Luther’s old, dusty words circled around in his head while he was tending to Ben’s grave-flowers – nobody asked Ben to become the Horror this time.  He stood at Luther’s side on purpose.  As unwavering as anybody crackling in and out of existence could really hope to be.

 _“Hey creeps – where’s my brother?”_ wasn’t up there with any of Allison’s best battle cries from the zombie movie playing on super loud behind them, if you asked Luther, but it was something.  They fought to that movie’s soundtrack – to squelching brains and zombie moans, to Allison’s tender moments with her zombie-hunting team.  And then, Luther heaved what remained of his splintering, bloody shovel and drove it deep into the motel room floor.  Through the carpet, through the building’s foundations.  Ben leaned against the motel bedframe panting, even though logically he shouldn’t _need_ the air; he glanced back at the tail end of Allison’s movie and told Luther, “Ooo.  I love this song.”

They went deeper under the motel, under the city.  After Luther’s shovel broke completely, he dug with his hands.


	3. Does This Jerk Really Think He Can Bury Me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday!!! Here’s chapter 3 – I hope you enjoy it, if you read. :) Thank you, again!!! I’ll be back next week, same bat-time (ish), same bat-channel (… fic.) 
> 
> (Actually, I'm posting this p early, but it's TECHNICALLY Friday where I am????)
> 
> Please, have a wonderful day! :D

Luther had always known he was strong — that _was_ his superhero shtick, after all.  Strong guy, calm and sure; first kid in space. All that. The idea that this undead kidnapper, the one who’d gotten Klaus, could lift up so much of the world with just one hand, though...  That was quite a thought.  Sorta made Luther wonder what _he’d_ be able to do if the power of undeath could ever really feel like it belonged to him.

It might’ve been nice having more tools to be helpful with — help Dad, if he decided to call for Luther, now... Help Ben, who had called Luther only recently and fought by his side after he’d given up on any of his siblings ever doing that again. Ben who reminded Luther to rinse out the slice that undead girl had cut in his forehead, just in case her blade had been soaked in holy water or something and it would turn into a sore.  Ben who kicked the spectral version of a little rubble into the huge pit Luther eventually uncovered in the middle of the motel room floor, and they watched it fall down and down and down.  An abyss seemingly without end, hidden under smudgy carpet.

Ben had said it looked like the undead guy climbed down a spiral staircase into the dark, but there weren’t any stairs around, now.  He’d also said the kidnapper managed to seal the floor back seamlessly over his head, and Luther _definitely_ didn’t know that trick. There was so much about his new self he hadn’t wanted to understand.

When official motel people swung by this room to check on the noise or switch out some damp sheets, anything like that, they weren’t gonna appreciate the giant hole Luther’d left in the floor.  He would have to come up with a professional-sounding explanation later...  Possibly ask Dad if he could offer some manner of compensation, like the old days.

Luther stared at that hole in the floor, shifting in his dirty shoes, and entertained a brief, brief image of dropping down feet-first into this undead world beneath the city.  He’d do a dramatic superhero landing Dad would’ve been proud of — or at least maybe thought fit the Umbrella Academy brand — wherever he ended up.  It’d be good to think of something clever to say on the way down, too.

Of course, in actuality, Luther and Ben carved footholds in the side of that dank, unforgiving space.  They climbed as quickly as possible without gravity taking them...  They climbed past snapped-in-half wooden caskets full of mossy bones and dead flowers, past echoey abandoned subway tunnels mostly boarded off and guarded by rats.  There were sewer pipes drooling quietly into the dirt — there were roots down here that didn’t feel like they could possibly connect to anything out under the sun.

Ben said it felt as though Klaus was draining — not his _blood_ , not completely, but something more.  It was as if Klaus’s power, which was normally crushed down deep inside him like too many clothes stuffed into a hamper, had been spread over everything in that deep place. To be honest, it wasn’t long before Luther felt something sort of like that, too...  Or he felt tired, at least, anyway?  None of his muscles had ached for years, no matter how hard he pushed them, but now...  It was sort of like the further they climbed the more _everything_ Luther felt.  _The more real._   It had been a long time since Luther’d had to pause and gather his strength back again.

Alive.  Luther didn’t feel _alive_ , exactly, but wasn’t this closer than he’d ever expected to come?  He could almost imagine eating ice cream without vomiting up so much of his insides.  He could almost imagine the coin-shaped pills he took were for allergies, or something.

By the time they made it to the edge of a concrete tube stuck into the wall and decorated like a swirling balcony...  All delicately painted porcelain like the edge of some extremely breakable music box... Luther had felt an actual heartbeat.  Just once, deep in his wet-rotten chest, and more of a stumble than anything.  But he’d frozen for a second, trying to hold onto it.  Trying to will a real pulse into being.

Luther wondered what Allison would’ve thought, knowing a single heartbeat could make him shudder like this, make him nearly lose his grip and slide a little on the crumbly dirt wall.

Ben and Luther lowered themselves into the pipe, then, scuffing their feet over the gold-leaf flowers of its porcelain face.  There were doors built into the walls of that pipe, as they got farther in, and a sickly greyish river running through the middle of everything.  It all smelled like old blood and mold...  Or, y’know, so much of both those things, but then drenched in floral perfume.  Luther gagged, and Ben said, “Vampire-town.  I think this pipe used to belong to a supervillain we fought once or twice.  Does ‘Countess Radiation’ ring any bells?”

Sure it did, but it was a little hard for Luther to think about Countess Radiation when he was imagining living in the deep, here, with the sewer for a ceiling, so far from even moonlight.  He still had dirt from his father’s garden under his fingernails; he had enough hospital blood in a fridge at home that he could drink some almost whenever he wanted.  And you know what?  Luther was still so hungry nearly all the time, so empty feeling, straining for living movement where there was only an echo.

Luther felt sick, imagining hunting like these undead must.  Imagining the kind of hunger that could bring someone here, living in a supervillain’s old toxic waste tunnel, maybe hanging glow-in-the-dark stars on the concrete.  Did his dad know about this place?

“We won’t let you end up somewhere like this,” Ben said, before the undead came for them again.  Before anybody actually managed to find Klaus.  Had he always been so good at reading Luther’s face?  Ben talked like he couldn’t completely believe what he was saying, though.  Like he _wanted_ to say _“I wouldn’t have let you,”_ because that much at least might’ve been true, if he weren’t...  You know.

“Ben, before you, uh, died, I should’ve —”

Should’ve tried harder to take care of you, the way you’re taking care of Klaus now?

Should’ve asked what kind of flowers you would want by your grave, someday?  Or, not that.  That’s a weird question...  Hm. Should’ve asked you more questions just in general, about everything, and tried to understand you?

Luther wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to say next, but Ben might have heard it in his voice anyway.  A ragged edge to things.  He smirked.  Said, “You should’ve snuck out with me and Klaus more often, too,” like he was finishing up Luther’s sentence without even needing to hear it.

“I couldn’t do _that_ ,” Luther said, even as he realized he had kind of snuck out that night, already.  Snuck out for a good cause, though.  That had to count for something.

They didn’t have to walk far, in the end.  Only a few more steps, now.

Klaus was nearby — Luther could feel his power in the air like a scream-laughing electric current.  Ben was flickering pretty erratically, as they headed into the city, losing his ghostly self a little every few seconds.  Sometimes he’d seem almost living, the watery blue haze of his death clearing like a mist...  And then Luther would be alone in the hallway, for a beat.  He didn’t pause, now, the way he had on the living street above them.  He just kept stalking forward, cracking his knuckles, stretching out his arms.

Luther called for Klaus, although he wasn’t sure his brother could answer him.  Although he knew screaming’d only be drawing out a fight, if a fight was gonna come.  It didn’t really surprise Luther when a tall undead man with an unnerving, soft-angelic smile slid up beside him.  The man slipped a hand over Luther’s mouth; he had come through the concrete wall, and his eyes were too calm.  Too sure of himself, too consuming.  _“Black holes,”_ thought Spaceboy, which might have sounded good in an Umbrella Academy comic book.  Maybe.

“We’re angry that you came here, you young, artificial thing,” the man said.  “But tonight can still go as it must.  Our lady is almost herself again.”

And _that_ was around where Luther elbowed the guy in the chest.  Hard.  He’d heard enough supervillain speeches in his time.

The kidnapper’s chest crunched apart, just a bit — his heart was a bloated, cold thing inside.  Luther shoved him back, ground him into the wall of that concrete tunnel.  He growled, “Return Klaus Hargreeves to me, or I’ll put a hole in your neck, next.”

Making threats during a fight felt different than plotting murder...  Always had.  Luther knew sometimes he threw punches without thinking; sometimes he broke things around the house he hadn’t meant to break.  Not often, but sometimes.  When it felt like he’d been dropped in the middle of a battle, again, and he was tasting blood in the air for the first time as a little kid.  The Umbrella Academy had left its marks over all of them, truth be told.

The blood in the air now was like rotten fruit, clumped in this guy’s veins, staining Luther’s jacket.  Luther would’ve spat this blood out, no matter how hungry he was.  It was so much like his own.

“You don’t understand yet,” the undead man said.  The kidnapper.  “How could you?  Wait a hundred years.  A thousand.  Wait as long as our lady has, and forget your own name.  Then we’ll see if you think the power to _give back life_ was wasted on someone like your Klaus Hargreeves.”

Luther tried to work his elbow in deeper — tried to shift so that he could aim a punch at the guy’s head, hard enough to splatter bone, for sure — but by then the man wasn’t there, anymore.  He had turned to mist, trickling easily behind Luther to tap a thin, crystalline blade at the back of his neck.

“What has Klaus done with his shred of life, anyway?” the kidnapper asked.  “Has _he_ created a refuge for the lost undead beneath an uncaring human city?”

“Shut up,” Luther said.  It was more than he’d afforded to most criminals, back in his superhero days.  More than Dad would’ve wanted him to say, probably.

There was a pitying sneer in the undead man’s voice, when he spoke next.  A sorry shake of his head.  “I’ve seen what he _is_ , you know.  Night-to-night.  He’s trying not to be a part of this world at all, when that’s everything our lady wants.”

Klaus was a good listener, Luther remembered; Klaus was kind when he wanted to be; Klaus would’ve wanted to heal this vampire-town, if he could.  He’d have been advocating _not_ to chase them all out into the sunlight, right?  If they’d been sent on a mission here, long ago.

Luther swung around, bringing the full force of all his strength down on the undead man.  The kidnapper who had gotten Klaus to like him — gotten Klaus to bring him takeout, even when he was so blurry inside he didn’t notice that none of his new friends really ate anything at all.  But Luther was out of practice; he had spent so long watching television screens with half-lidded eyes, so long trimming hedges to look like enormous violins.  The undead man was faster, and when he drove the clear glass blade into Luther’s shoulder he felt a dizziness tremor through him.  Felt his knees buckle.  Felt the already dark underground go so much darker.

When Luther woke up, next, it was in a soggy velvet grave, under a shallow layer of dirt.  His hands had been placed gently in his coat pockets; there were old-fashioned bandages along his shoulder and forehead.  He had been tucked away for the time being, but maybe that _particular_ undead man hadn’t felt right offing someone who could become one of his own.  Who he saw as nearly, nearly there.

Luther kicked his red-wood casket open and scraped his way out through the splintered pieces.  He coughed dirt off his tongue, and blinked around at wherever he’d found himself, now.  The walls were veined with what looked like gold, crawling with heavy, seeping moss.  A cave.  Further inside the undead encampment, then.  Luther couldn’t stay here long.

He dragged himself away from that makeshift graveyard, trailing his hand along the wall, practically propping himself up.  The world swam in and out of focus all around him; everything ached, even his teeth, his fingernails, all the little kinds of pain he’d forgotten to think about.  Wasn’t that funny?  It had been too long.

Luther found Klaus in a room with twisted roots for a ceiling, with light blue curtains hung around as if to mimic a daytime sky.  He was on a bed of old newspaper and moss, ruined silk and flowers.  He was shaking, and his eyes had become pools of spectral mist.  There were undead all around him, and...  Immediately to his side...  Someone Luther thought would have to be the kidnapper’s “lady.”  She shifted, almost the way Ben had, between someone monstrously lovely and someone with crooked yellow teeth and trusting eyes.  Who she was trying to escape and who she had been, probably.  Bringing herself back to stolen life.

Luther crouched just outside that cave-room, his own gravedirt on his shoes.  He could barely see, barely keep his head from sliding down into his hands.  He was alone.

If they were gonna get out of here, Klaus would have to wake the hell up.


	4. So, I Guess We’re Camping Out at Vanya’s?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!!! Happy Friday!!! :D :D :D Dang... I hope this chapter turned out okay. I ended up editing it way more than I thought I would just now -- sorry I'm posting this a little later than I planned to.
> 
> A couple notes:
> 
> 1\. I reference some of Klaus's powers in the TUA comics, here. It... Felt appropriate. Please be warned.  
> 2\. There is a song called "Damn These Vampires" by The Mountain Goats that I've been listening to a lot while writing this fic. :P  
> 3\. Thank you so, so much for reading this far/sticking with this story!!!!  
> 4\. I hope your day has been fantastic, and this next week goes really well for everyone. :) (Also, I wanted to have four notes 'cause this chapter has a lot of Klaus??? Um. There we go, anyway. It's also chapter four! >:D) 
> 
> Thank you so much, again!!!

When Luther was young and the Hargreeves family house had been alive and full of scheduled training sessions most days, Dad had usually put him in charge of waking everybody up.  This was part of being the leader, he said.  Giving bad news and not accepting “No” for an answer; learning to take command and be listened to.

It had been pretty difficult waking Klaus up, throughout the years.  Maybe he had been awake for most of the night before then, anyway, huddled against the wall of his room and watching ghosts shuffle through...  Maybe, later on, he’d have smoked something out in the garden and he would offer Luther a bleary, red-eyed smile before booping him on the nose like he was an alarm clock with a snooze button or something.

It hadn’t been like Luther wanted to scold Klaus, or rip the blankets away or any of that.  He hadn’t enjoyed it, not even once.  There didn’t used to be a choice, though.  Or…  Hm.  Or Luther just never knew why he should want to look for one?

There had only been a couple mornings throughout Luther’s whole childhood where he could remember sleeping past his _own_ alarm clocks.  Those mornings had never gone too well for him.

If Luther’d known he would have to gamble on waking one of his teammates up — gamble his, Klaus and Ben’s entire manifestations on it, even if he wasn’t necessarily gonna use the word “lives” for everybody — he definitely wouldn’t have chosen Klaus.  Maybe Allison, who had often been awake and dressed and doing her hair when Luther swung by to wake her...  (Something she’d hinted she did to make mornings a little easier on him, actually... ) Or even Diego, who was a light sleeper and didn’t like thinking Luther could catch him unawares.  But definitely not Klaus.

That was how stuff went, though, in the end.  Luther was half-collapsed against a moss-dripping cave wall, now, splintered coffin wood clinging to the fabric of his coat.  His head was swaying and heavy, full of whatever chemicals had been painted onto the undead kidnapper’s knife.  Whatever chemicals could work their sickness on the dead.

Luther was trying to decide how many vampires he could smash down into the cave floor before someone managed to slice off his head; he was watching a lady older than countries — older than how long he imagined a single human’s memory should rightfully last — drain Klaus’s power out and into the air.  Into herself, and...  For a few precious hours, at least...  Into her people.  Her people who had been dead so long Luther didn’t want to let himself imagine it.

“The power to reach the dead,” Luther’s dad has always said.  That was what Klaus carried around inside him, like Luther’s strength, like Ben’s twitching chest full of monsters.  Dad never described Klaus’s skill the way his undead kidnapper had, so far as Luther could remember: “the power to give life.”  But that’s what it was, clear as anything.  _That’s what it was_ , and the Lady of Vampire-Town (as named by Ben, earlier, and it had sort of stuck in Luther’s head) was drinking it dry.

Luther couldn’t allow himself to hope for another messy heartbeat, yet.  Not knowing what it could cost Klaus.  Whatever the undead had done to him down here, it wasn’t the sort of thing that left a lot of a person behind.

Maybe Luther could’ve charged into the undead gathering, stomped right up to the lady and gathered his brother in his arms…  But probably not.  He could barely walk without stumbling, just now — he wouldn’t have made it far.  He needed Klaus to bring Ben back, didn’t he?  He needed Klaus to make him less-mortal, again, so he could help get everybody out of here.  So he wouldn’t be so dizzy and blurry-eyed, tasting his own rot on the back of his tongue.

God, Luther wanted…  Ugh.  A drink?  Was it wrong to call it that?  He remembered the way Mom had brought him that lemonade-cup earlier and swallowed hard.

There had been some tricks to waking Klaus up, back in the day.  Luther didn’t have the right tools available for most of them, at the moment — he didn’t have an icy pitcher, for one, or an extremely annoying gag song to play over and over until Klaus dragged himself up to turn it off.  He didn’t honestly have a lot of faith that anything he could do right now might actually work.

But Luther had to try and trust Klaus, now, didn’t he?  He had to reach out and see if they could understand each other at least a little bit...  At least long enough to get back under the sky.

Okay.  Okay.

Here goes nothing.

 _“Klaus!  Wake up!”_ Luther bellowed, putting on his best furious-team-leader voice, “Dad’s office is a mess — you didn’t set another fire in the trash can, did you?!”

That particular trick only worked sometimes — the threat of punishment and authority only went so far with Klaus.  This time...  This time, beneath the world, where the vampire-town curtains swayed like somebody’s theater-set version of heaven...  It didn’t seem like it was working at all, at first.  The lady creaked her shifting face up to smile at Luther.  Her eyes were full of vertigo, full of falling.  They reminded Luther of standing on the edge of that pit he had carved out through the floor of Klaus’s sketchy motel room, whichever face she wore, living or undead.  Stolen or her ruined, beautiful own.

The lady smiled, and her undead community trickled away from her side so quickly.  They came to the door of that cave-room almost fast as thought, moving like liquid, moving like a bad dream.  They were so close…  And they would have knives too, maybe poisons of their own – yes, right.  Maybe they _all_ had strength enough to lift up the world with a single hand.  Like Klaus’s kidnapper.  Like Luther might, too, if he ever really learned who he had become.

Luther would run.  He would fight these damn vampires until his bones broke the way his shovel’d broken, so many messy pieces.  He would —

Maybe it was a trick of the wavery underground light, but it looked like Klaus’s eyes twitched under his eyelids — ?

Luther swayed to his feet and grabbed one of the approaching undead by the back of the neck, slamming their face into his knee.  He nearly fell over doing it.  Nearly cracked his head on the crooked cave wall.  Someone else purred, “Poor, stubborn boy!” next to his ear, and the woman beside them chirped, “You know, I heard he was the first kid in space...!”

These were dusty voices, with someone else’s blood clotting between everybody’s teeth.  This new undead stranger smoothed some grave dirt out of Luther’s hair, and the woman who knew about Spaceboy twisted his arm behind his back until he heard something crunch apart.

There you go.  It was starting, with his bones.

Just like the shovel.

Luther slammed someone – he wasn’t _entirely_ sure who – into the side of the cave wall.  The air smelled maggot-ripe and rotten-fruit-sweet, then, and there was an ugly squelching sound.

The dead were circling him, and Luther could barely, barely think. He couldn’t see Klaus through this mess anymore.  He could barely see anything.

This time, Luther screamed to Klaus for help. Ragged voiced, honest. Strange to his own ears.  He didn’t even completely think about doing it: the words were like Luther’s reflex-smiles up on the living street. Luther screamed for help, and impossibly…  Probably about as confused as he was…  Help came.

Klaus had track marks up his arms, those bruises sunken deep into his skin looking like darkly smudged pastel.  His eyes were still so full of ghost-light; he stood, shook himself off.  Klaus – the Umbrella Academy’s Séance, once – walked through the crowd and all the lady’s undead attendants crumpled to his feet.  Corpses, again, for a little while.  Corpses, until Klaus passed, until the sun set, until they shivered to un-life again.  Klaus left the dead in worm-eaten piles behind him, and Luther thought it sort of looked like he was dangling a few inches above the ground as he walked.  Both Klaus’s feet were bare, now.  He didn’t have even a little bit of grave dirt between his toes.

Luther felt death tugging at him as Klaus got close, but then it shuddered. Reached back, like Klaus was chasing it away from him personally, somehow.  Klaus met Luther’s eyes and said, “You _know_ I didn’t light any fires, Luther.  C’mon.  Don’t lie.”

Maybe Klaus smiled, there, but it was a flinching, painful thing.  Luther didn’t think to smile back.

 _That_ was just before Klaus’s power sputtered out and he nearly fell hard on the cave floor, except that Luther caught him, barely.  Shaking, and hissing Spaceboy-style expletives at his snapped arm. That was just before Klaus told Luther that he’d been having the strangest dream, and he was pretty sure he’d met God and still wanted to be agnostic.  Did Luther know God rode around on a little kid’s bicycle?  Did Luther even fucking realize who just saved his old-timey superhero ass?  You’re welcome. You’re welcome...  Oh no, your arm.  Are you okay?

It was unnerving how fragile Klaus’s bones seemed, then.  How breakable he was.  How completely Luther’s brother had almost slipped away.

Klaus didn’t stay awake long.  Luther carried him back out of vampire-town a different way, so he could wait for his bones to knit themselves together again before climbing any more motel room pits.  He tied Klaus over his shoulders piggyback-style, knotting his wrists gently around his neck with a torn-off piece of the blue curtain that was probably supposed to look like a sky.  Theater-set heaven.  You know.  After a while, Ben was strolling beside them both again.  They talked about whether Klaus could’ve freed himself, possibly; they talked about whether he’d ever done anything like that before.  Dropping the undead down like limp rag dolls in his path, or...  You know.  Sort of flying?

“Nah,” Ben said.  “No way.  I would’ve remembered that.”

Luther and Ben got lost a couple times, in that vampire-town labyrinth under the breathing world.  There must’ve been plenty of ways in and out — it looked like one might have led to the amusement park’s Tunnel of Love, for instance, and another to a sewer grate just outside the university — but they eventually climbed out of a rickety supply closet in a closed department store.  Everything smelled like sharp cleaner fluid and dusty mannequins.  Luther braced himself against the cracked brick wall when they made it, closing his eyes.  Trying to remember the feeling of that solitary heartbeat deep in his chest.  The sun would be rising very, very soon, now.  Luther could feel it in his moldering bones, in the pull of his skin.

“It’ll take too long to get you back to Dad’s,” Ben said, voice low, though of course no one around except Luther could’ve possibly heard him.  “But I think I know where we are...  There’s a place near here where Klaus and I’ve crashed a couple times.  You’ll think she’s gonna turn us away at first, maybe...  But she won’t.”

By the time they got to Vanya’s — their sister Vanya’s, who Luther hadn’t seen since forever and a day ago, since well before he died — the sun was teasing just at the edge of the world, turning the sky to warm dark blue.  Vanya checked Klaus’s pulse, first thing, and she had so many questions about what the hell had happened to Luther’s arm.  Vanya’d been asleep when they arrived, but she came to the door in a bathrobe; Vanya’s hair was soft and loose over her shoulders, and she didn’t shove anybody back out the door when Luther said that if he couldn’t find a dark place...  A completely sealed-off place...  To sleep for a little while it would be really bad for him.  Please.

Vanya didn’t ask why, not yet.  She said, “I’ll put some blankets down in the bathtub... Tape up the door.  It's the only room without windows...  Would that work?”

“Yeah, sure — a little like camping,” Luther said, and Vanya offered him a bemused smirk.  It was painfully familiar: it felt like Vanya had been wearing that expression off and on their whole lives.  If Luther remembered right, waking Vanya up had been something to dread when they were _really_ small…  But it got easier and easier as they grew, until he could barely remember anything else.  He was fairly sure she used to throw pillows at him, though.  That was funny to imagine, now, seeing Vanya all grown up and in an apartment she paid for herself, sheet music on the tastefully carved end table behind her. 

Vanya had been the reason Luther’d shaped one of his dad’s hedges into a giant violin, not too long ago.  That sheet music was something like the old days – at least she still played the violin. 

Luther grinned back at Vanya carefully, and promised he would answer whatever questions she had as soon as he could.  However difficult it would be.


	5. Tell Me Everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... There we have it. Chapter 5. A day early, too!!! I told someone very kind in a comment that I would try to post this a little early if I could... Hopefully it's enjoyable to read. :) 
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with this fic all the way to the end. It has been an absolute joy to write!!! Aw, TUA vampire AU. 
> 
> Please, have a fantastic day. Thank you, again.

Luther never felt anything once the sun rose, which was probably for the best, nowadays.  Rot sunk in deeper all the time, changing him, claiming him, whatever a person decided to call it.  Who wanted to feel themselves fall apart slowly?  Messily, too, and possibly dripping a little down their sister’s bathtub drain in certain _extremely specific_ cases.  Luther didn’t want to think about any of it yet.  He “slept” with his legs bent up so he’d fit in that makeshift bed, and he came back alive with the moonlight.  Woke up to the smell of Vanya’s vanilla soap and what was probably bubbling pasta sauce from outside the door.  That sauce might have smelled really nice, before Luther died.

It sounded like Klaus and Vanya were making spaghetti.  Oh, thank God.  Klaus was something like okay, then.  Whatever had been drained from him had flooded back, by now, maybe; his cuts had been patched up, possibly by Vanya, possibly by Mom or some outside-of-the-house doctor Vanya might’ve gotten him to in the dark.  Luther remembered Klaus gone limp, for a second, his eyes flooded with unearthly light.  Klaus surrounded by the undead, set tenderly, hatefully, on that bed of newspaper and silk.  An offering.  It had seemed like maybe he’d never stand up again, then.  It had seemed like maybe Luther was too late, too slow to catch up, too –

But no.  Klaus was laughing, beyond the bathroom door, shaky and uncertain about whatever it was they were discussing, but…  Laughing all the same.  Luther shifted, running a hand over the places where his arm had been snapped apart, that undead woman twisting it behind his back.  All healed, now.  Luther wouldn’t even see a scar, at least not until he looked in a mirror and managed to pry his eyes away from any new worms tangled in his actual, mercilessly-honest skull.  He groaned a little as he sat up.  Tossed one of his stiff legs – uh, get it?  “Stiff” like “dead?” – over the side of the bathtub.  Vanya had a few unopened tins of bath salts, and a shower curtain with pale papery flowers on it.  It was modest but elegant, like a lot of the music Vanya’d practiced on her violin when they were young.  Luther tried not to kick the curtain on his way out, but he couldn’t completely manage it.  That was a familiar thing, too, really – trying his best to tread lightly, to be helpful, and then kind of wincing when he wasn’t sure he got it right.

Klaus and Vanya were on the phone.  Luther gathered that soon enough, brushing himself off with his back firmly turned to Vanya’s bathroom mirror.  Vanya was saying something about how she’d exploded a little at some hospital-person who refused to believe Klaus hadn’t “just overdosed” again – and how her own anger had sort of surprised her, actually – and Klaus was complaining about how Vanya had pancake mix around but no syrup or whipped cream or anything.  Spaghetti, it appeared, had been a compromise.  Luther could just imagine Klaus leaning over Vanya’s shoulder to call off-topic remarks into the phone; Luther thought Vanya was probably snickering but shifting away, swatting at him vaguely with the very tips of her fingers.

It could have felt like home again, a little bit.  If Luther had let it.  Is this what his siblings could feel like, if they had a few hours’ worth of trust in one another to fall back on after some kinda calamity?  If Vanya felt like one of the team?

“Okay!  Okay I’ll let you go,” Vanya said.  “I told Diego I’d call and update him, again…  Yeah, I didn’t think he wanted to hear from me, either.   I think he’s worried about –  …  Yeah.  I promise: I’ll ask Luther to call you back when he’s up.  Right away.”

Luther froze.  His breath would’ve caught in his throat, if it could have.  Process of elimination, right?  Based on Vanya’s tone – based on the idea that she’d be updating Diego on everything in a minute or so…  _This was Allison on the phone._  This was Allison wanting Luther to call her back.  She hadn’t contacted him in so many years, not really.  She’d been a figure on glossy magazine covers, a name listed in movie credits with bands Luther didn’t know playing in the background.  A memory that he knew he’d hold on to, bittersweet as a stolen heartbeat he hadn’t expected to feel.  Allison was the most _alive_ person Luther could imagine, just then – her eyes all bright and cunning, knowing so much about everyone around her all the time.  Luther imagined Allison lit up in the sunlight, even now, even once the moon had claimed so many of his memories.  He had thought it would be difficult telling _Vanya and Klaus_ about himself, about why Spaceboy hadn’t been in any newspaper headlines lately.  Hah.  Right.

Maybe it was better Luther wouldn’t have to see Allison’s face when he told her he had died.  Or actually, maybe he shouldn’t mention that part directly, at first?  Luther had rehearsed possible ways he could approach this topic in his head so many useless times.  Sometimes he imagined Allison holding his hand, even if it was cold and plastic-y strange; sometimes he imagined making a bad joke about opting out of an expensive funeral, or even asking her to try her Rumor powers out on him.  Speaking her wishes into being, like she had as a hero when they were young.  Making him human again, the way Klaus could, maybe, if he were willing to train...  If he were willing to stay clean.  But Luther hadn’t realized that was an option until just, just recently.

Luther’s mind was going blank now, of course.  Now that he had not only a chance but an outright _request_ for an explanation.  Luther’d never liked denying Allison anything…  Or hiding stuff from her, really.  Not when he was Spaceboy and she was the Rumor; not when he’d thought they could have lives together.  Not eternal lives, maybe.  But real and enough.

Luther felt dirty.  Well, more than _felt_ – he was rubbing grave dirt out of his hair just then, wasn’t he?  Dirty and starving…  Though he wasn’t actually starving, not yet, not the way the undead could get.  For a long, traitorous second, Luther considered how it would be to sink into the drains completely.  Down into the dark, somewhere secret.  Probably one of the undead he’d met the night before could have done it.  Disappeared.

Now that Luther thought about it, maybe this was how a lot of the undead who ended up in nests like the one that had taken Klaus felt right before giving themselves to the sewers.  It all started with choosing to disappear.  Choosing not to be known as who – or what –  they _were_ , now, whoever might be waiting for them somewhere in the living world.  Maybe some of those undead had made nice gravestones for themselves; maybe some of them had been brave enough to say goodbye.

“Klaus says…  Well, Klaus says _Ben_ says Luther’s fine.  Should be up any minute, now, apparently?”  It was funny, hearing Vanya talk about Ben.  It seemed like she truly wanted to believe he was there with them, though.  Like she would ask where he was standing in the room, when Klaus spoke for him, and then fix her eyes as faithfully as she could on that empty patch of air.  That was so like Vanya…  As completely like Vanya as the unopened bath salts with old-fashioned script on the labels, right?

Luther wouldn’t have trickled down his sister’s drain, even if he knew how, he didn’t think…  He wouldn’t have bailed on them all.  Obviously.  No one could’ve pried all the tape off his side of the bathroom door then, right?  No one could’ve promised Allison he wasn’t dangerous _or_ in danger, probably, at least not yet; no one could’ve made sure she knew she didn’t have to worry anymore.

Vanya chuckled, just a little.  Bitterly.  She said, “No, Dad hasn’t called me back, yet.  Pogo and Mom were relieved to know everybody’s safe, but…  Mm.  I’ll keep you posted.”

And then she must have hung up.  Luther hesitated.  Closed his eyes.  He smelled pasta sauce and folded his arms around himself.

Luther knocked on the inside of the bathroom door, when he felt about as ready as he thought he ever could.  His hand was shaking, and he almost knocked a hole through the wood on accident.  When he got back out to Vanya’s main rooms, Ben waved cheerfully and held Luther’s eyes, steady and sure and with the corner of his lip tweaked up as if to say, _“I knew you’d stick around.”_ Ben had been reading a book of short stories on Vanya’s couch, apparently, leaning back with his legs loosely crossed.  He scooted over to make room for Luther, now.

“It’s okay, big guy,” Ben said.  “ _This_ shouldn’t be the bad part.  This is where things start becoming okay again.”

“I’m already okay,” Luther said, but Ben knew he didn’t mean it.  Ben knew he hadn’t meant that kind of thing for a long time.  He scoffed, and Vanya bundled up all the tape from the door and threw it away.  They sat together in Vanya’s living room, with starlight creeping in the window and distant traffic on the street outside.  They called Allison again, before Luther said much of anything – it wouldn’t have felt right if she were one of the last to know things about him, and everyone, _everyone_ had to understand why.  She was the hardest to tell, but she was also the most necessary.  Allison wound up on speakerphone in the middle of the table, and Klaus left the spaghetti sauce they’d been making on low, low heat in the kitchen until Luther told them they had no reason to feel bad about eating any.  No, he didn’t need a bowl, but it wasn’t personal.  Probably the extra stuff Klaus had added to the recipe turned out just fine.  That, at least, actually _was_ fine.

When Allison picked up the phone, Luther needed a second to process her voice.  It sounded differently than it did on TV – not completely, but enough.  More like he’d remembered her; sadder, too, though it was horrible that sadness had managed to leak through so much of their past until it became almost expected.  Allison said Luther’s name carefully, as if she knew he’d thought about slipping out the door or through the cracks in the bathroom tile but was still trying to figure out why.  He glanced down at the Umbrella Academy tattoo on his wrist and reminded himself that it was the same as hers.  If these people weren’t his team – if they weren’t his family – then no one was, in all the world, living or dead.  Whether they’d chosen to fight by his side in the past or not.  Whatever happened next.

This was about choice, just like calling to Klaus back in vampire-town had been about choice.  Just like following Ben out into the world in the first place, hefting his tree-planting shovel up over his shoulder.  Luther didn’t meet anybody’s eyes as he talked.  He didn’t even look at the phone.

Allison answered all Luther’s stalling questions about her daughter and her career and whether she’d seen an interesting lunar occurrence a couple weeks back...  She answered them, but promised the _full_ story once he explained exactly why he and Klaus had arrived at Vanya’s apartment with broken bones and/or passed out and covered in blood.

“You know I’m here for you,” Allison said.  She sounded far away, almost miserable.  Her voice said, _“Or at least, you used to know.  I used to be,”_ though Luther didn’t think she would have offered those words outloud.

Allison asked him to tell her everything, and somehow, Luther did.

…

It was a heavy, rain-smeared night when Allison’s plane was set to land.  Luther had promised she didn’t have to fly out so late – promised he knew that red-eye flights were awful – but she hadn’t wanted to arrive when he would be sealed up in a room without a speck of light.  He was going to pick her up from the airport, after all, and take her to her hotel.  They’d swing by home and check out the hedges he’d fancied up around Dad’s garden, first, Allison said...  She wanted to see what Luther had been up to all this time.  Get a taste of his world, now, just the way he tried to picture what it would be like to turn up in California.  She was going to take a picture of the giant violin hedge for Vanya, Allison had said.  She sounded like she sort of expected Vanya to frame the dang thing, but Luther wasn’t so sure.

Allison was going to hug Pogo and Mom in the morning, and then she’d threatened to yell at Dad from the doorway of his office.  Scold him for not calling her, _even just her_ , when Luther died.  Klaus had coughed a frantic laugh and Luther had sounded so, so flustered when she even suggested it…  Which is not to say he hadn’t been sort of awestruck all the same.  Vanya had looked kind of vindicated, for her part, though, and said she thought Allison should go for it.  Maybe _this_ was the side of Vanya that had decided to write her memoir.

 _Allison should’ve been there_ , she had said on the phone just a couple nights before, and Luther assured her it was probably lucky she hadn’t had to see any of his lower moments.  She’d scolded _him_ a little bit, then, too.  Said what, did he think he was never going to drink anything in front of her for the rest of forever?  Did he really think she’d want him to wake up undead wondering why he was alone?  Ridiculous.

Ben had snickered at him, then, and nudged Luther’s arm like, _“See?  I told you so.”_

And he had, really.  Ben had also advised Luther to ask whether he could attend any of Vanya’s upcoming concerts – and to kindly bring Klaus along so Ben could come too – which had turned out to be solid advice as well.  Vanya’s eyes had gone wide and confused when Luther first brought it up, but now…  Well, the concert was tomorrow evening.  Luther was going to dress up for the first time in years, and Allison had already insisted on arriving a little bit late with him.  Once the sun set, you know.  They all had tickets, and Luther had been trying to re-teach himself how to do up a tie.

Part of Luther was still waiting to see if Dad would ever scrape together a new mission for him...  But a different part of him thought maybe he could be useful even if that mission never came.  Maybe his life wasn’t over, not completely.  Not yet.  There was so much left to discover about Klaus’s new abilities; there were actual bars to swing by after Vanya’s concert.  Luther had picked up a couple donuts from that old place he and the rest of the Umbrella Academy had snuck off to sometimes, when they were kids.  Flavors he remembered Allison liking, back then – one mint chocolate and one with strawberry jelly.  He was holding the box on his lap, sitting in that almost-empty airport, and wondering if it would’ve been overkill to bring flowers.

Allison said she and her husband had been sleeping in different houses for months; Allison appeared a little while after her plane let out, dragging a suitcase and scanning the crowd for Luther like she was a tired bird looking for a place to land.  He watched her light up when he called to her, gathering himself up to his feet; it felt a little like he’d come back from the dead all over again.

Allison rested her head against Luther’s chest for just a second when she hugged him hello, and she didn’t pull away from the cold quiet there.  She ate one of the donuts he’d brought in the car and grinned at him in the rearview mirror as they left the airport behind.  Luther smiled back before even considering what it could mean.  The mirror.  She had looked at his new, broken reflection, and smiled at him.

It rained all the way home, and trails of water lit up across the car windows like silvery roads under the streetlights.


End file.
